Pointing to each other for support
Thursday, 30 June 2011If you are building Joomla! or Magento sites, and depending on third party extension developers, you might have come across it (we have anyway): Two extensions conflict with each other, and the developers both point to the other for solving the problem. It's not cool, but somehow understandable. How did we get there and what can we do about it?
Free extensions versus commercial extensions
As Yireo, we provide various extensions - both free as commercial. But interestingly, we only come across conflicts with our commercial extensions: There's a simple logic in this. If we built something simple, which requires no maintenance, we just release it for free. But the more complex extensions (MageBridge, Vm2Mage) require much more work and support, so therefor we charge a fee.
The more complex an extension (or any kind of software) gets, the more chance you get that something might conflict. But besides this explanation - simple versus complexity - we also have users that come knocking on our doors for support for free extensions that are not ours. Huh? It must be something psychological: If you get something for free, you're not expecting that much of support. But if you pay (and certainly if you pay a hefty some of money), you are expecting the developer to solve all your problems - including the ones that are not his to solve.
Prices too low for proper support
We do not get angry about this, but always try to point out that our paid support only covers the Yireo extensions only. Ofcourse, an extension developer should be playing the nice guy, and certainly when he/she is making good money with open source projects like Magento or Joomla!.
But the bare fact that an extension developer points to somebody else for support that he himself is actually responsible for, is a new disturbing fact. It might show that - in some cases but not all - an extension developer is not making enough money to give proper support? This is certainly true when a developer is not asking anything at all (this is what we call: volunteering), bless them. But if the income of a developer is only based on extension sales, it is a different story. In those cases, it might be right to say that the prices are too low for proper support. Paying 20 Euro for a specific extension sounds tempting, but is the support then proportionally?
Tech knowledge required on side of webdeveloper
This is boiling down to the fact that open source has been associated too many times with the word free (as in free beer). The fact that software is made available as open source software is good, but if the software is a bit more complex, it would require excellent support. But there are a lot of cases where excellent support is lacking: Either because the extension developer is not making enough money, or because the developer is just too busy creating excellent software and has little time left for excellent support. There might be more reasons.
Instead of blaming it on the developer, there's actually a better strategy: Blame it on the user. Yes, there is an excellent piece of software available, but to actually implement it, you need to have a certain technical knowledge. This allows developers to concentrate on their job. This is not only true for commercial extensions, but free extensions as well. Magento in general might be free, but it doesn't mean that anyone should implement it. The same is true for extensions: A lot of times, solid technical knowledge is required to make implementing an extension to a success.
As a website builder, you should know this. Ofcourse, if you're not a developer yourself, it's hard to determine how hard it will be to use a specific extension beforehand. There's an easy way to solve this: First, test things before you try. Try to determine the complexity of some piece of software, and if you think it is too complex, see who - in all reason - should help you out. A lot of times, stupid mistakes can also be prevented by proper testing (for instance, by having a test-environment).
The responsibility for using open source software seems to lie more with its users, than its developers.